fine stuff was music to him. He'd thaw out, get up,
briskly stick kindling in the stove and, if it was a
cold day, make coffee. He never turned the boys
away without an order. "I know what you're up
against," he would smile, digging his contribution
Qut of his old pants grandly. He took magazines for
gardening, the women's journals, farm publications
and stock raisers' bulletins. Evenings when the men
gathered at Artie Young's general store and post-
office, it gave him importance to have Art hand out
mail to him across the counter.
"Well, Fred, see you're laying in a store of Sears-
Roebuck toilet paper for the winter," heehawed one
of the Miller boys.
"Just see you don't come sneaking around bor-
rowing it off me," Fred cracked back, laughing and
enjoying himself. Nights in the store were too short
by far. Artie turned off the lights shortly after nine,
and there was a long evening ahead. His own house
stood solitary at the edge of the village. Sometimes
he'd hate to walk home past the lighted windows
where whole families sat clustered behind glass, as
exclusive as jewels in a showcase. He'd crack his
fingers in a kind of despair, feeling the earth bitter
cold against his feet through the thin sales.
Up the holler road
it
was worse. The city families
lived there, and in the summer time the sound of
their high jinks floated way down the valley. He
might be sitting on his porch, watching the moon
come up-there she hung in the evening sky-and
up the valley you could hear the laughing and cutting
up floating down in the stillness. Sometimes he walk-
ed up that road. He'd stand in the dust and listen to
the brook and talk out loud to himself, telling the
world what he'd do. He'd watch the lights in the
Chance house across the brook, and sometimes on
the; other side of the glass him and her would be
playing checkers. The Chances had a big pool
beyond the bend, deep in the trees, and they used to
go together to swim around in the afternoons. After
a hard day's work digging garden for Mrs. Gridley,
Fred used to sneak off the road into the trees and
take a dip in their pool himself. It made him feel
good, as if he weren't cut off from the world the
way he mostly felt. In naked that way, the way
they went too, he felt fine and as if he could tear
right ahead now and make a showing.
He'd tramp back to the house and go through all
his magazines looking for schemes to get ahead.
There were still plenty growing on trees, to judge
by the ads. You could make a fortune raising rabbits
or mushrooms. All a man needed was to get out of
the ordinary rut. Be a pathfinder. Sitting in his house
with the kerosene lamp turned high so it smoked
chimney, Fred was fired to get ahead. Be would
quit being a bum, paint his house, get new clothes
and shave oftener. He would even get a wife. He
would swallow his resentment at the Gridleys for
their pretended interest in his reform just so they
could get their chores done. He would pull their
weeds and hoe their potatoes and sweat hauling
stones for their walls to get money scraped up for
rabbits.
.
His front yard was cluttered with rabbit hutches
on 'a sure-fire business proposition at one time. They
bred like mosquitoes, and Lord God what a mess
they made. They fairly stank him out of house and
home. Fred was on the run, hunting for cabbage and
lettuce for them. The ad had said that all rabbits
would be bought back by the firm, but when Fred
achieved a shipment the place had gone out of busi-
ness. They didn't even leave an address.
It was the same bad, luck with the mushrooms.
You paid eight dollars cash for the seed, the com-
pany to buy back the crop. It looked sure-fire. Fred
was handicapped for a good barn to start with, but
Mr. Chance turned over his big stone barn and even
helped make the bed. The two fellows sweated away
for a couple of days. Mrs. Chance came out look-
ing on at the work. Fred said he would give her a
great big mess of the very first mushrooms to come
up. They were going to be humdingers, extra size
Jumbos.
Chance got interested in the proposition himself,
and the two men came every day to hang over the
barn door and peer down at the mushroom bed in
the cool dark. It was about the happiest time of
Fred's life in that valley. The bed was dug deep,
with a fine graded assortment of cow manure and
fresh earth. Every day Fred carefully sprinkled it
from a big can. He'd even lean over, smoothing out
imaginary ridges in the soil. The stuff was due to
hatch like a chick, crack out of the box, at a certain
time. On the scheduled day, Fred was hanging
around all morning. Nothing happened, but the
earth heaved in a couple of places. The next day two
puny mushrooms cracked out. Fred wouldn't pick
them; he wanted a big mess for Mrs. Chance. The
day after one more mushroom came up, and then
the golden harvest was over.
Fred's heart just about broke. He had been count-
ing his chickens before they hatched, night after
night. He had got so far as to figure on a radio and
maybe a second hand car. Him and the boys could
take a run up to Canada, like the big shots did. With
this failure, he didn't seem to know which way to
turn. There was nothing for it but to tank up and
forget. He went on a bust and danced down the
road past the village homes with his pants wide
open. He told Mr. Schaap to go whittle his stick.
Fred had a special grudge against Schaap because
he had made trouble for the boys who worked in
the same mill. When the slack season backed up on
them, Schaap had scurried to the boss and said he
would be glad to work for less so he wouldn't get
laid off. It brought down wages all around. Fred
now told Schaap he was a lousy c-s-,
and then
MARCH,
1936
